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ART; Painter and Sculptor In Show of Versatility

MOSES ROS, who is featured at the Hostos Community College art gallery here, is a painter and sculptor who also has a degree in architecture. He specializes in designs for public buildings. This may sound workaday, but a glance at some of his work in several media indicates that he is at least in part a visionary.

For example, he proposed a design for the interior of the Tremont Avenue subway station here that called for a pink mosaic background and figures in white tile. It seems comforting, but it was not chosen. Another, more rambunctious idea for a mural at a station at 161st Street was also turned down. But he scored with a design for a child-care center to be built in Washington Heights in Manhattan. It is an elemental notion, but it gives a clue to Mr. Ros's whole oeuvre.

He will make 100 bronze relief sculptures, each having a wiggly bubble-like shape and containing a vignette illustrating an aspect of childhood. The entire project is called ''Bubbles of Dreams,'' and the reliefs will dot walls on all the levels of the center, mimicking the way bubbles rise. This homage will be counterpoint to the regular angles of the building.

Another side of his art is also lighter than air: he makes mobiles whose components are made of paper or paper pasted to Styrofoam. Five dangle in the current show. The two ''Big Angels'' are figures familiar to those who have seen Mr. Ros's work before. His line is as spare, economical and versatile as Keith Haring's, and he frequently uses it to outline a man's torso and head topped by a fedora with a pronounced indented crown. This mascot symbolizes a number of related ideas: he is a businessman, representative of conventional society and a consumer.

The wings of the ''Pop Angels'' are fashioned out of advertisements while their bodies are made of small boxes that once held rolls of camera film. Another mobile, ''Tainovivo,'' honors the Taino people of the Dominican Republic, where Mr. Ros's parents come from. The two large sculptures planted on the floor, stabiles to keep with Calder's terminology, are made of corrugated cardboard and could serve as stage sets.

The exhibition bears the title ''Trabajos Armados,'' or ''Assembled Works,'' and every piece, even the more conventional paintings, has additions to the main body. The paintings show off Mr. Ros's rangy wit and clearly delineate his vision. The paintings are deceptive on first encounter because of their simplicity, but there are a lot of smart jokes here. The first of these brightly colored works most likely to be encountered is ''New World Atlas.'' The strong man's arms are upraised, but he treats the round world like a beach ball, balancing it on his forehead, reaffirming Mr. Ros's devotion to buoyancy.

''New Man at the New Crossroads'' is more complex, although it is also an emblem. It has wings that extend beyond the main rectangle, and those are the paths of electrons that orbit a nucleus obscured by the image of a boy at a laptop; his hands are on the keyboard. Appropriately, at least for anyone who has ever had computer problems, the keyboard is a grid for a crossword puzzle.

Mr. Ros's all-purpose hatted figure is one of two characters in ''New World Utopia.'' Fittingly, his image is on the screen of a television set being toted on the back of a man wearing a cap with a long bill. In the most elementary terms, this is an update of a common illustration of capitalism -- the idle class exists on the labor of the poor. In the lively ''Ride 'em Get the Cheese,'' this surrogate for humanity becomes a cowboy and his fedora momentarily becomes a cowboy hat. He is astride a blue animal, which at first has the sleek profile of a dolphin, but its facial features reveal that it is a mouse, or worse, a rat. In this case the painting is a novel depiction of a rat race.

In a smaller painting, Mr. Ros presents another, more conventional rat race. ''The Racers'' is a number of overlapping, animated, outlined figures, which have both hats and briefcases. So it is something of a shock but also a relief to see the man seemingly at ease as he sits sideways on a straight-backed chair in ''The Thinker.'' The title, of course, brings to mind Rodin's famous nude, whose fist on his chin reinforces the image of someone deep in thought. Mr. Ros's sendup of this icon can also be disturbing, if the inference is that today's bourgeois man does not think at all.

Mr. Ros would seem to be intent on offering a critique of contemporary life, however refreshingly his message is packaged. But emotions occupy a place in his vision, too. ''Universe Apart'' is a man and woman entangled. But their arms are reaching out, toward cutouts of a sun and a moon at the painting's top corners. The near meshing of their bodies seems to account for little. A related painting is ''Appealing,'' in which the figures themselves are widely separated -- giving force to the double pun of the title.

Another double pun is ''The Intersex,'' a cutout of a computer-monitor-shaped head. A couple of cellular phones might intentionally look like guitars; their antennas are like necks of those instruments. Therefore, viewers might feel relieved when they see the possibility of a genuine connection. ''The Hotline'' is a red telephone of the old-fashioned sort with a cord of coils linking the base and receiver.

''Moses Ros: ''Trabajos Armados'' ends May 7. For information, the number to call is (718) 518-6700.